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If you indent paragraphs, every paragraph gets indented, period. It doesn't matter if that paragraph is a single word of dialogue, a page-long rant, or four pages of stream-of-consciousness. So: ...
I really don't think there is a reliable way to do this visually in the text simply because whatever visual cues announced to the reader that they have started Part II have long been forgotten befo...
It depends on the book design. Generally speaking, the width of a text column is kept within certain bounds in order to make the text scannable. A column of text will become much more difficult to ...
I hate to try to divine motive, but are you sure this is a story question? It sounds more like you are trying to make an argument than tell a story, more like you are trying to find a way to convin...
Because you are attaching your speaker tag to the dialogue being spoken. If you were using an action tag, or separating the speaker tag from the dialogue, then the quoted material stands alone and ...
Does something need to happen in every chapter? Yes. Something needs to happen in every paragraph. Something needs to happen in every sentence. The story must advance. A story needs more to adva...
It's a lot easier to think of the character if s/he has a name, but it isn't strictly required. In Daphne DuMaurier's Rebecca, the first-person narrator is never named, and is only known as "the se...
Both ages as separate interviews, since his answers will be different and you will have to handle his responses differently. In the second interview, he can even look back and say "Yeah, I remember...
Sketch out both (or multiple) ideas as fully-fleshed plots from beginning to end. Get all your separate possibilities down on paper. Put everything aside for a week. Come back to them and re-read...
You can't do a montage in prose, anymore than you can paint a symphony or score a sunset. It is simply a technique of a different media. Each media has its own storytelling devices and you should n...
The answer to this and your other similar question is the same: Your Mileage May Vary. If you can get it to work, go for it. There's no rule about it one way or the other. In Susanna Clarke's Jon...
It depends on context. Why has the character's name never been mentioned? Why does no one know it? What label, nickname, or epithet are you using to describe the character instead? I would mentio...
There is no One True Way. Every writer is different. Even the same writer may have two different approaches to two different books (or series). JK Rowling plotted out the entire seven-book Harry P...
I just finished reading Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising sequence which does almost exactly this, although over five books. The first book has three siblings as main characters, book 2 has one boy...
I'm not sure where we got the notion that readers have to identify with the main character. We are one of the most narcissistic societies of recent memory but we are still interested in people othe...
sure, why not? I think as long as there is some coherent structure behind the character so that you can establish that this person would behave in thus-and-such a way, and it's consistent and credi...
Welcome to the site, Chimere! As a general rule, it's best to stick with one protagonist. As @Private has mentioned, if you have two, it should generally be a hero and a heroine (please see the com...
Gary Gygax's Gord the Rogue series was allegedly an entire RPG campaign turned into a set of novels (which explains the ridiculous deus ex machina ending). If role-playing helps you to flesh out ...
It depends entirely on whether your voice is an interesting one. We all tend to believe our own voices are more interesting than they really are. Despite all the talk about expressing oneself, what...
You're being given a prompt, so that will do half the work for you. I think it was J. Michael Straczynski, writer of Bablyon 5, who wrote that one could sum up "conflict" in three questions: Wh...
You don't capitalize the dialogue tag she said or she laughed if it's attached to your dialogue. You would only capitalize She laughed if it's a new thought. So: "Do you know where we are going...
While I wouldn't consider "gerunds" (or even adverbs) to be mistakes, if you're worried about your grammar, hire an editor to do a line-edit. Explain (if this is the case) that you're happy with th...
I think "selected literary pieces or passages" is your linchpin here. Let's take that college mainstay, the Norton Anthology (this one is American Literature). This is a book which contains quote...
Yes, you can ask for feedback at any and all of those stages. The feedback which is helpful at any stage is "This works and here's why" and "This doesn't work and here's why." The "here's why" is...
As others have said, you need to make the bad decisions believable by the reader. The easiest way to do that is to make the hero struggle with terrible consequences for doing the right thing. An ...
